Michael Barone, a Fox News commentator and US News writer, argued in US News a few months ago that the Iraq attack was just the latest installment in an aggressive, expansionist, national history full of war. I personally largely agree with him, and direct interested readers to The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000, by Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton. Not everyone does, however, and Colin Baxter, Chair of the Department of History at East Tennessee State University, fired back this week on the History News Network. Take a look and see what you think.
Please share widely!
The conflict between an aggressive foriegn policy has always been met with an equally strong isolationist culture in the US. From Washington’s farwell address during a time when various factions were plotting to give involved in the European wars, to the anti war whigs in the war of 1812 and the Mexican War, our nation has always been at war with itself…with the ebb and flow favoring one-side over the other throughout our history.
<
p>
Certainly our global dominance in post wwII and supreme dominance in the post cold war nineties have dealt us a hand that makes intervention tempting–even then we have plenty of anti-intervention (I think isolationist became a dirty word after the Hitler thing)fever coming from both sides of the idealogical spectrum, whether it was the left in Vietnam and Iraq or the right in Somalia and the Balkans.
<
p>
Just the ying and yang of American culture.